


Wear the Black in Mournin' (The Pied Piper Remix)

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: gateverse_remix, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-01
Updated: 2007-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-03 12:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aiden doesn't go near villages often, let alone the larger settlements, the towns that defy the Wraith in the name of trade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wear the Black in Mournin' (The Pied Piper Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Man in Black and the Baker's Daughter](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/15363) by Sholio. 



> This is a remix of a fic by [Sholio](http://sholio.livejournal.com). Many thanks to [Wychwood](http://wychwood.livejournal.com) and [Trinityofone](http://trinityofone.livejournal.com) for betaing.

Aiden doesn't go near villages often, let alone the larger settlements, the towns that defy the Wraith in the name of trade. Necessity forces him close to them sometimes: when he rips the sole from his left boot too badly to be able to repair it himself, and he trades one of his better knives to a cobbler to have it resoled; or when he has to go to ground for a week or so on a desert planet, and the search for water drives him to the shanty town that's built into the bright red stone of a cliff face.

Abyah, the old woman who gives him enough to drink, and a place to sleep, and more food than he can bear to eat, reminds him of his grandma. Kind face, tired eyes, a love of gossiping with him, no matter if he knows who she's talking about or not. She squats over her cooking stove and tells him about the grandchildren who live on another planet, the infidelities of Frehla, the woman who lives in the next tunnel over, the strangers who came here only a couple of weeks before Aiden himself showed up.

"Funny way of talking, they had," Abyah says, squinting as she adds another handful of essa pepper to the kind of stir-fry she's making, watching in satisfaction as the concoction hisses and spits and browns in the pan. "Like a mixed up chorus of birds—two of them all smiles and business, the big one saying nothing at all, and the one with the pale eyes all chatter, chatter, chatter and wanting to look at the solar cells." She looks up at him suddenly, speculative, eyes the tac vest he still wears and the patched up boots on his feet, and Aiden knows she's made the same connection he had as soon as she mentioned the man with the stiff posture, dark glasses and ready smile. "Dressed a little like you, too. Pity you were one step behind them."

Aiden swallows down a mouthful of the flat, tart bread she'd given him to take the edge off his hunger while dinner cooks, and grins. "No ma'am," he says, "I'm always one step ahead."

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Aiden wonders if Sheppard would even recognise him, if he could catch up with him. It's not just the physical changes, any more—the way he carries himself; the way he moves; the way both his eyes are growing dark now, opaque—but what he does and how he does it.

He stands on half a dozen worlds and takes the time to see the job through before he has to run—watches as Wraith outposts explode, curls of orange flames against dark blue skies, darts dropping from the sky as their navigation systems fail; watches as Wraith hive ships burst outwards in the night sky, sparking into the most obscene falling stars that anyone's ever wished on.

It's good work he's doing, necessary work, but he doesn't know if Sheppard would recognise that—doesn't know if Sheppard could see that this galaxy can make things more dangerous than humans, more dangerous than Wraith. Doesn't know if Sheppard can see just how this galaxy made him.

 

* * *

 

He sits in a tavern on the outskirts of Athelon and wolfs down a bowl of oily stew, aware all the time of the noises around him, the smell of sweat and well-worn clothing, the nearness of so many people. The tavern's owner passes by him, squeezing her way between the tight-packed tables, cool earthenware pitchers of wine in each hand; Aiden can feel the heat of her, her scent like a tangible thing, see the sway of skirts and hips, and he has to curl his hands into fists, close his eyes against temptation and the insistent rush and pulse of the enzyme in his blood. He's not going to give into that, not now, not here, but god, if he could just—

The urge lessens as she moves away, and he distracts himself by listening in on the conversations of the other people in the room. Conversations about the rising price of toba root, Maretha's dying mother, the lone man who the stories say has destroyed one, three, _seven_ hive ships. That gets Aiden's interest, but not his surprise; he's heard stories about himself on a couple of planets before now, echoes and murmurs about the things he's done, reports carried by traders, distorted by distance and the horror of the Wraith.

"Would I lie to you?" the loudest of the men says. He's large, broad-shouldered, with the bright red hair of a Thernan nomad; when he speaks, he spreads his hands wide, as if inviting their trust as well as their attention. "I tell you that three months ago, Rekah was culled and colonised by the Wraith. They land their hive ship on the edge of the western ocean and begin to build—and now all that's left is half the ship's rotting carcass. Blown up." The man sounds supremely satisfied, though Aiden can't tell if that's from the attention he's receiving from everyone else at his table, or at the thoughts of hundreds of Wraith corpses littering the Rekahni coastline.

Not that it matters much either way, Aiden thinks, using a hunk of bread to sop up the last of the stew. Stories are stories, and he knows the truth, doesn't need the good opinion of a stranger to convince him that what he's doing is right. Doesn't stop him from wondering, sometimes, what stories they're telling in other places, in other worlds, of what Sheppard and his team are doing; doesn't stop him wondering if stories about him are making it back to Atlantis, wondering if Sheppard can separate truth from fiction. Wondering if he even wants to.

 

* * *

 

Later, on Esba, he tracks and takes down two Wraith drones with a modified version of their own stunners; riskier than killing them outright, especially when he's hunting on his own, but it means they're still alive when he cuts open the glands in their throats and squeezes out every drop of that warm, yellowish fluid. Half he decants into one of the small vials he keeps in the belt at his waist; half he injects right away, glorying in the way it burns its way through his veins, tasting like copper and blood at the back of his throat.

At his feet, the two Wraith choke and gurgle as they die; one of them makes a last effort to shake off the effects of the stunner, to reach out and drain Aiden of his life in revenge for Aiden draining away theirs. It's too little too late, though, and Aiden dodges him easily, reaching down instead to slit its throat with his knife.

He's a little dizzy when he stands up, vision sparking and blurring, and he reaches up to rub a hand across his eyes. He doesn't know if it's because he had too much of the enzyme, or not enough, if he's building up an immunity or if it's just that the more he uses it, the more his body changes. The Doc could probably tell him, Aiden thinks, as he holsters the stunner once more and heads back downhill towards the gate. Who knows, maybe by now Beckett's had a chance to come up with some kind of synthetic version—something to blunt the edges of the craving, something to stop these needs that scrape together inside him, heavy and hot and sharp as glass, want and desire and burning urgency.

Aiden shakes his head, wading through the knee-high grasses, squinting up into the gold and purple sunset. Even if the Doc could make something for him, something to let him go back to the city, maybe even back to Earth and his family, it would still be fake, still be false. His body would know it, and he would know it, would balk at the replacement of something that's as much a part of him now as his bones and bile and blood.

He can't go back, and he can't regret it—he can't afford to. Aiden shakes his head again, and walks on.

 

* * *

 

The first populated planet he comes to after Esba, he finds a whore and he fucks her, hard and fast, on a mattress made of prickling straw. Aiden picks her because she looks like Teyla—or at least, he thinks she does. It's getting harder to remember Teyla's face, the curve of her smile, the copper-bright fall of her hair. It's getting harder to remember a lot of things from before. Her arms come up around him, warm, and he rests his head against the hollow of her throat; it's almost like being safe, just for a moment. Aiden closes his eyes when he comes.

 

* * *

 

Right now, Aiden's an army of one. Kind of like those army recruitment ads, or something from the old westerns he'd watch when he was hanging out in the rec room with the Major. The Lone Ranger, the Man in Black, Clint Eastwood, a hundred men on horseback riding across a desert bleached white and sterile by an unforgiving sun. A hundred different men, a hundred different heroes and all of them alone. It's good work, it's necessary work, it's what he has to do—and in the long quiet moments before dawn when he can't sleep, in the hush of every endless moment before he takes down another Wraith, in the ache and burn of his muscles when his supplies are running low, he knows that it's not going to work. He needs more, he needs more than himself, he needs his team. It's just going to be him, still, and it's not going to be enough.

 

* * *

 

He moves on, moves on, until he comes to a planet he's been to once or twice before. Then, it was late spring, or maybe early summer, warmth in the air and rich greenery crowding around the neat brick houses; now, it reminds him of nothing so much as back home in the fall, when all the leaves are slowly shading brown and his grandma would stand outside looking up at a sky growing grey with the promise of winter snow. There's a bite in the air, but Aiden doesn't think it will be cold enough to snow here for a while; he could probably stay here for a while, rest up, recover from a couple of mild but nagging injuries, think of what he's going to do next.

He makes camp out in the woods that lie between the main settlement and the Stargate. This world's main attraction is its solitude, its relative calm. Aiden knows the villagers tend to keep to their own settlement, or to the carefully cultivated fields which run from it down to the shores of the nearest lake; they won't have to ignore him, because they won't even have to know that he's there, something that suits him just fine.

He's not so much in the mood for company at the moment; even if he were, he wouldn't be inclined to head out towards the town. The handful of times he's gone there looking to trade, he'd felt uneasy, like the flesh was crawling on the back of his neck. The headman, Lucius, spoke nothing but nonsense to him and looked at him with a vacant smile and a hungry gaze; everyone else seemed nice, but their eyes were blank, like there was nothing going on behind them. It reminded Aiden too much of better living through chemistry, made him think of all those strictures he'd heard as a kid from his grandma, his pastor, and he'd left the place empty-handed.

There's probably some irony in that, Aiden thinks as he sets a small fire growing and hunkers down in front of its warmth, waits for its flames to heat his food; Sheppard would probably be only too happy to point it out to him. But it's just—it's just, he thinks, as he pulls out that day's dose and injects it into his thigh—it's just that he's gained so much from having the enzyme in his life, but he could see nothing behind those people's eyes but loss.

 

* * *

 

Aiden's been there about two days—days where he mostly sleeps and eats and sleeps some more—when he wakes to hear a disturbance in the undergrowth that surrounds his clearing, getting closer all the time, an insistent thrashing like an animal fleeing or in pain. He's on his feet in an instant, knife in one hand and a stunner in the other; he doubts he'll be able to get away in time from whatever it is—it must have seen the fire, knows he's there—but at least he can take some shelter, maybe get the drop on it.

From behind a still-blooming _kressa_ tree, he watches as something staggers into the clearing, feeling his eyebrows shoot up when the source of all that noise resolves itself into a small child. A girl, he sees, her long dark hair in braids and her clothes mud-stained and torn. Something wrong with her, too, he can see that straight away. Her eyes are wild and staring in a face that looks drained of all blood, and she's muttering to herself, low and insistent. He watches and waits—she looks sick, frightened and harmless, but he's learned the hard way not to trust—but she seems not to be aware of his presence, or even of the fire and the little cluster of his belongings in the middle of the clearing. She shakes her head, takes a couple of stumbling steps forward, and then collapses into a heap on the ground.

_Great_, he thinks, _just great, just what I needed_. He's not in the mood to cart a sick kid all the way back from here to the town, but he goes over to her anyway. No sign of movement or reaction when he nudges her with the butt of the stunner, gently at first and then more firmly, not so much as the flutter of an eyelid. He finds a pulse, though, skittering underneath the too-hot skin at her neck, and soon after that sees the wound in her calf. It's bleeding steadily, the flesh red and swollen around two tiny puncture marks—so it's not Mitarian fever, like he first thought, but some kind of bite.

He lifts her up and carries her over to the fire to get a better look at the wound, and yeah, just like he thought—snake bite, probably from one of the yellow wood-serpents he's heard thrive on a couple of worlds with climates like this one. Aiden hadn't paid the warnings much thought, because the chances it could affect him while he was on the enzyme were low; obviously, this little girl hasn't paid much heed to them either. She still hasn't come round, but her eyes are rolling back in her head now, even while Aiden is trying to dredge up what he remembers of field medicine. He doesn't know, he can't think—everything he learned back on Earth is probably useless here, and while he could bring her back to her town, by the looks of her, she'll probably be dead by the time he carried her there, no matter how quickly he runs.

Aiden can't leave her, either, can't let her shake herself apart in his arms, and his mind is made up before he's even aware he's been considering it. He pulls a syringe from the pouch on his belt, taps until he finds a vein in her small arm, and injects the enzyme.

The girl gives a sigh, shuddering against him before going limp, her breathing suddenly fast and shallow. Aiden bites his lip, wondering if that's a good sign or a bad one. _Stupid, Aiden, this is a dumb idea_. She was dying, maybe she still is; he has no way of knowing if the dose was too much, not enough, or even if it will work with the venom to kill her. No way of knowing; all he can do is wait.

 

* * *

 

He sits with her for that day and night, and for most of the next day as well. He does what he can for her, remembering how his grandma would wrap him up in the softest blankets she had when he was sick, or how his grandpa would sit by his bedside and hold his hand until he fell asleep, keep his forehead cool with a damp washcloth. The girl alternates between cold and warmth, breaking out in sweat only for it to dry, clammy, against her. Sometime around the following noon, he gets worried, thinks he's going to have to dig a grave before he leaves; but then her eyelids flutter open, and she's looking at him. Obviously still in pain, but her eyes—big and brown, making him think suddenly of his cousin, Michelle—focus enough on his face to let him know that she's really awake, and aware.

He can see the way she flinches when she sees his face, but he's mostly grown used to that. He ignores it in favour of holding out a cup of water to her, and telling her to drink. She eyes him warily at first, and takes a couple of tentative sips; but then thirst takes over and she drinks greedily. She hands the cup back to him when she's done, then bites her lip and looks as if she's inwardly fighting with herself about something.

"I'm Bella," she whispers, as if she's confiding some great secret. "My mama says I'm not supposed to talk to strangers."

"Hey, Bella," Aiden says, helping her to lie back down, "I'm Aiden. I'm sure your mom wouldn't mind you talking to me, I'm here to help. You got a nasty bite on your leg, huh?"

She takes some time to come back to herself, stomach cramping and skin burning as the poison is flushed from her system. While she lies in the nest of blankets that Aiden's bundled around her, he tells her stories of back home, baseball and his grandparents and long summer days that he and his cousins would spend in their battered old truck, driving out of town in a straight line to nowhere.

 Bella turns out to be a funny little kid, solemn but fidgety, strangely old for her years, with a habit of smoothing the creases from her dress and cloak with her hands. Aiden's grandma would have called her a persnickety little thing. She likes to talk, and he doesn't discourage her: it's been a while since he had a chance to listen to someone for so long, just for the pleasure of hearing their voice. She tells him about the fierce yellow wood-serpent that bit her; about her mother, who has been ill; about her father, Lucius; what he could do, the power he had over people, how he lost it. Of the strangers who came from a faraway city, led by a man who dressed all in black, just like Aiden.

Aiden sits up straighter, and encourages her to talk, and listens until she falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

The kid sleeps a lot over the next day or so. Aiden should probably be moving on by now, finding another world, tracking down the hive ship that hit Nossa last cycle, and Dinta the cycle before that. Bella's doing a lot better, the one or two doses of the enzyme he's given her since then getting her over the worst of it, and he knows that he could probably leave her on the doorstep of someone in the village and she'd be okay; someone, surely, must have missed her by now, missed a little girl who went out to gather firewood a couple of days ago, but he's seen no sign of any search party.

He keeps her with him, polishes his knives and reassembles his gun while she sleeps, or goes out foraging for food. There's a kind of small mammal here, looks like a rabbit but with the long tail of a squirrel, that cooks well; a couple of kinds of nuts he can pick and roast. On one of his trips into the woods, he finds a plant that sprawls along the forest floor, looks kind of like the one Bella had told him her dad used in his potions—deep blue, star-shaped flowers nestled in waxy green leaves. He kneels down next to them, reaches out his hand to pluck one, then hesitates—Bella's description of what her father had used them for had been childlike, simple, but still clear enough for Aiden to understand. If he were to use them wrongly, if he were to be selfish, the things he could do—but no, he's not selfish, and he's only ever tried to help, regardless of what the Major might have thought. He's got a use in this galaxy, and so do these, and he picks a couple of the flowers, then great handfuls, stuffing them into his leather satchel.

Bella's awake by the time he gets back to their little camp, sitting up and coaxing the fire a little higher with strategically placed twigs and bits of slightly damp moss. He cleans and spits the squirrel-rabbit thing for cooking—the squirbit? Teyla would probably know its proper name—before he checks her temperature and the wound on her leg, now so small that you'd hardly notice it, if you weren't checking.

"Looking good," Aiden says, ruffling her hair and messing up the fine braids. "I can probably drop you home right after we're done with supper. Bet you'll be glad to see your folks, huh? Your mom must be worried."

Bella looks at him askance from beneath her fringe. Aiden knows that look; it's the one he imagines he must have worn on his face for the first couple of weeks after his mom left him at his grandparents, leaving in the middle of the night while he was still sleeping, taking off for Chicago without saying goodbye.

"Hey," he says, smiling at her until she gives him a tremulous smile in return. Maybe he should keep her with him until the worst of the cramps from the enzyme withdrawal have passed. It can't take too long—she's not had any since late morning, and he doesn't think he's kept her on it for too long. "Hey, it's gonna be okay. I'll make sure you're safe." He doesn't know why he's surprised to find that he means it.

 

* * *

 

After dinner, it's time for his dose. He rolls up his sleeve to look for a vein, but pauses when he feels Bella's eyes on him. "What?" he says. His voice is more snappish than he means it to be; he's been sparing with the enzyme for the past couple of days, trying to conserve his supplies, and it's starting to show.

Bella looks up at him, mouth down-turned and pleading. "Please," she says, holding out her arm. "More."

"Bella, no," Aiden says, his mouth suddenly dry, "You can't have any more, it's not—it's not safe." He hadn't meant for this, he'd thought she would be safe. Thought she'd be young enough, strong enough, to fight it off; miscalculated the effects of so many doses on a body so small, thought she could have it and give it up after just a few days.

"Please," she says again, and her eyes are dark, almost black.

 

* * *

 

He doesn't sleep much right after he's taken a dose. Every nerve jitters and sparks with energy, every star is too bright, and there's nothing he'd like more than to fight, to run until he's reached every horizon, passed them by, left all of this behind. His thoughts whirl, and he lies on the grass and looks up at the night sky that's lit up with the fire of a thousand supernovas, and wonders: if this is what McKay's thoughts are like; if this is the feeling he passed up all those nights in high school when someone offered him a joint and he said no, because he was Aiden Ford and he was going to be a Marine and that couldn't be him; if what he had done was right; if he should have given more of the enzyme to Bella; if he should give her more, if—but no, not that, he thinks. There's no denying it, now, he'll have to give her more. He'll always have to give her more, have to show her how to get it. She's like him now. Bella's like him, and there could be more, will be; he's never going to be alone again, not anymore. He's got the enzyme, he's got Lucius' herbs; he can earn back a family.

 

* * *

 

She wakes just before dawn, and leads him back to the village, wanting to get in and out before any early risers see her leaving with a bundle of clothes under one arm and her spare pair of boots slung over her shoulder. The Lavin homestead is a neat two-storey place made of brick and wood, with windows and doors painted a pale green; a small flock of chickens is already up and pecking around the yard. It's a nice place, the kind of place his grandparents kept before they moved into town, but Aiden can see the tell-tale signs of neglect: places where the paint is peeling, weeds growing up between cracks in the paving stones, a woodpile that's almost empty.

Aiden wonders how long they've been there, those signs that no one cares, those signs that slowly, by degrees, this place is fading from home to house. If this place started to crumble after Bella's father left, or before; if all that had been holding it together was the force of stolen charm, subservience in a bottle.

The back door is on the latch, and Bella slips quietly into the house. Aiden waits on the doorstep and watches the sun come up over the woods, the world brightening as the sky bursts gold. He can hear the sounds of movement upstairs, low voices, doors opening and closing, then a clatter of booted footsteps down the stairs. Aiden frowns a little, considering; he's going to have to teach the value of stealth if this is going to work.

The door opens, and Aiden turns to see Bella standing there with two girls, both a little younger than she is. Twins, by the look of them, with tightly braided dark hair and pale blue dresses, each with a small bundle of clothing under one arm. They're rubbing sleep from their eyes with their fists; Bella clearly woke them up. She rests her hands on their shoulders and looks up at Aiden. "This is Vestha," she says, "and this is Fehni. Girls, say hello to Aiden." She sounds stiff and formal, as if reciting what she knows to be good manners from memory.

"Hello, Aiden," they chorus dutifully. Fehni, who is the slightly taller of the two, speaks around the thumb she has crammed into her mouth.

"Hey guys," he says, crouching down to look them in the eye when he talks to them. "You ready to come on an adventure with me and your big sister?" Aiden can't tell if they're thrown more by the fact that he's a stranger, or by the fact that his eyes are the same shade as their sister's are now, a new and glossy black—they nod, wide-eyed, but don't speak.

"That's great," Aiden says with a grin, the one practised by days spent babysitting his little cousins, honed by missions spent distracting kids to keep them away from McKay while he worked. "We're gonna have so much fun." He looks up at Bella. "You have any trouble with your mom?"

Fehni's thumb makes a popping noise when she pulls it out of her mouth. "Mama's sleeping," she says, before Bella has a chance to speak. "Mama's head hurts and she sleeps lots and we're not to go near her when she's asleep, else she gets angry."

"Oh." Aiden looks up at Bella. She just shakes her head and shrugs; there's nothing on her face but an impatience to be gone, no sign that there had been any trouble with her mother, no hint that the woman would wake up before all her children had gone. "Well, I'm sure she'll be just fine, you wait and see. Bella and me, we'll just have to take care of you until she's better, okay?" He forces some good humour into his voice, and reaches out to take the two little girls by the hand. They nod and go with him willingly enough, trotting by his side as they turn back towards the gate, Bella a little ahead of them.

It turns out Vestha is the more outspoken of the twins, and with Aiden and Bella coaxing her, she's soon chattering at him, telling him stories and pointing out the birds which occasionally fly overhead. Aiden thinks he'll probably wait until he's got them offworld, got them set up somewhere safe, before he weans Vestha and Fehni onto it. He'll need to have a stockpile of it, he thinks, before he starts them on it; he doesn't know yet how much he'll need to mix with the stash of Lucius' herbs he's got in his backpack, what combinations, what proportions he'll need, before it'll work like he needs it work.

And he will need it, he sees that now. He'll need the enzyme and the herb both, mixed together, need it to persuade the girls, to make them stronger, to add to their numbers—after all, that's what they are, they're _his_ family now, and he's going to raise them right, show them what he knows, teach them the true meaning of semper fi. He's got to raise them _better_.

When they reach the 'gate, he punches the address for one of the big trading worlds into the DHD. They can blend in there for a little while, lose anyone who might concern themselves about the fate of three little girls, before they move on and find themselves someplace to call home, someplace to start building. Their eyes light up, all three of them, when they see the wormhole engage; Aiden'd lay odds that this is the furthest they've ever been from home, the first time they'll ever go offworld.

"I'm going to take you to the best place on Uban for breakfast," he says, as they walk up the steps of the 'gate platform, "Have you guys ever had sweet _resna_ berries with pancakes?"

All three shake their heads, no.

"No? Okay, this is going to be great, trust me. And then," he says, as he puts one hand up to the ever-changing blue of the event-horizon, lets his hand slip through, remembering the way it felt the very first time he did this, a hundred lifetimes ago in Colorado, "then I'm going to show you something awesome." He smiles down at them, his family, his future; and together they walk out of the world.


End file.
